University of Michigan - Michiganensian Yearbook (Ann Arbor, MI)

Page 11 text:

TO ALMA MATER To Michigan, the University, Which within the memory of our fathers, Has grown from a few scattered buildings in the wilderness To a University, With great laboratories and libraries; Which within the memory of our fathers Has grown from an idea, untried, doubtful, To a force powerful in the life of the nation, Moulding the life of many men, many states; And sending its message of democracy to the uttermost parts of the earth. To Michigan, the University, Its faculty and its founders, Its prophets, its leaders, its administrators; To the men who have gone. And the men who are here today; To its sons who have done things, In letters, in art and in science, In the world of affairs, in the councils of the nation, In law, in medicine, in feats of engineering. To Michigan, the University, With its good fellowship and its friendships, Its glad days and jovial nights; To the memories it awakens. To Michigan, the University, With what it means To you and to me Who know, We dedicate this book.

Page 13 text:

History of the University of Michigan Where is the alumnus who does not feel the inherent bigness of the University of Michigan? Before there were students, faculty, a permanent location, or any of the outward symbols of an institution of learning, she still commanded attention by the dignity of her name; a Catholepistermiad or University of Michigania was established by the territorial legislature in 1817. The gift of three sections of territorial land coupled with the Congressional grant of a township gave vitality to the act, and within a few years a small school under two professors opened its doors in Detroit. The real history of the University begins with the admission of Michigan as a state in 1837. The new Commonwealth, in accordance with its constitutional pledge, passed the statute providing for the organization and government of the University of Michigan in the first year of its statehood. Believing the Congressional gift of a second township in addition to the land grants to the Catholepistermiad, 48,000 acres in all, to be ample endowment, the act proposes no other method of support, but the need of immediate funds coupled with the legislative relief acts forcing the sale of the land at the low prices caused by the panic of 1837 speedily de- stroyed all hope of self-support. Ann Arbor, a small town of three thousand aided no doubt bv the natural beauty of the Huron Valley, and according to scandal-mongers still more powerfully assisted by fifty well dis- tributed shares of the Ann Arbor Land Company, won the new Seminary from its nearest rivals Monroe, Marshall, and Detroit by three votes. In 1841, four years after the cite was determined upon, stumps had been cleared, and Main Hall together with four professors ' houses stood ready for occupancy. If the front portion of the Homeopathic College is a fair sample of these early houses, straightness of line rather than beauty must have inspired the designer ' s pen. Of the other three, one has disappeared and alterations have withdrawn the remaining two into the less exposed central portions of the President ' s house and the Old Engin- eering building. More humiliating has been the fall of the Main Hall ' ' whose beauty and harmony appealed intensely to an enthusiastic press. Skeptics passing the monotonous grey sides of the north wing of University Hall with a sneer should remember that its voluptuous exterior subjected the Board of Regents to a severe gov- ernmental censure for extravagance. In its period of youthful independence the four floors of the southern third of the structure were used for chapel, classrooms, library, and museum; but neither time nor interior alterations have glossed over the historic fact that the northern two-thirds was designed for a dormitory. Natural expansion, before the war, demanded the completion of a similar building known as South Hall. Frugality and industry appear the cardinal virtues in this period of beginnings. Students, furnishing and caring for their own rooms in the college halls, lived at an average yearly expense of ninety dollars. Locking the dormitories at nine o ' clock in the evening and calling compulsory chapel at half past five the following morning conduced to seasonai le hours and in these good old days one recitation always met before break- fast. Card playing, dancing, and drunkenness equally merited the extremest penalties while an extensive sys- tem of fines made all damages to University property profitable except (those chargeable to) inevitable visita- tions of Providence. The nearest approach possible to parental control underlay the penal code of 1848, a spirit of administration strangely out of harmony with present day leanings toward student control. Limited resources, of course, forbade anything like an adequate curiculum, but comparatively little was developed from the means at hand. Greek and Latin represented the language department; Mathematics closed with Calculus in the Senior year; and short courses of a term ' s duration allowed a superficial dip into Logic, Natural Theol- ogy, Political Economy, and Constitutional Law. Rhetoric made its first appearance in the catalogue of 1845, French in 1847, German, Italian, Spanish, and History in 1849. The emphasis of academic work is strikingly shown in the Visitors ' Report of 1850: out of two thousand five hundred and fifty-five yearly recitations, six hundred and forty were devoted to Greek, three hundred and thirty to Latin, four hundred and ninety-five to Mathematics, two hundred and thirty-six to Modern Languages and only one-third ti all other subjects com- bined. Text books, unsu|iplemented by wider reading, were used exclusively and electives unknown. Even more foreign to modern University ideals was the removal of Doctor Wheedon from the chair of Philosophy in the late fifties because of his pronounced anti-slavery views and because he openly advocated the doctrine called the higher law, a doctrine which is unauthorized by the Bible (and) at war with the principle precepts and examples of Christ and his apostles. With scarcely an exception the early members of the senate were theo- logians, and denominational balance played an important part in faculty appointments. Of the first Commencement in 1845, the Detroit Advertiser writes; The pieces spoken by the graduates were for the most part of superior merit, evincing a depth and originality of thought, and clearness and beauty of composition that is seldom surpassed in the older colleges. Whether this was the same reporter that wrote of the beauty and harmony of the North Wing is undisclosed, but at any rate stores were closed and the Presbyterian Church crowded with eager towns- people as was singularly fitting to these eleven graduates, the first of alumni. Memorable as the day was in its prophesies of the future, the past was not forgotten. On Com- mencement morning, as a consequence of the death, a week previous, of Professor Whiting, the Regents re- solved; That one hundred and fifty feet square of land be set apart for a University cemetery. A shaft monument north of the Cannon still bears tribute to the first death in the University senate but the campus burying ground was never occupied. Two years later, in 1847, tne Visiting Committee made a strong plea for the planting of trees on the campus, considering that the highway of thought and intellectual development and progress, much of which is parched a nd rugged, should as far as may be, be refreshed with fountains and strewn with flowers. The professors, in this instance at least of the earth more earthy than a legislative com-